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“Well, whatever the case I hope no one else is taking this as seriously as us,” Dom said. “Because then we can get into
Wal-Mart, load up on everything we can, and head home.”

His phone chimed
.
Did you see the news? I'm afraid.

“And pick up Chelsea,” Dom added, and began texting her back.

“Hey, Dom? I don't think the first part of that plan will be so easy.”

He felt the car slow down and he looked up. There was a vehicle on fire in the Wal
-Mart parking lot and a horde of frightened, desperate people fighting each other to get inside.

“Holy fu—
”

Then the car door opened and he was being d
ragged out by a man with a gun.

"Give me what you have!"

The man with the gun said it over and over, pressing the muzzle into Dom's temple. The sounds of people shouting and metal shopping carts clinking were louder now. Dom was on his knees staring at Brian, pleading with his eyes for his roommate to do something.

But he didn't do anything. His face was blank, his body tense.

"We don't have anything," Dom said. The man kneed him in the back. Dom fell forward, his face slamming against the car door. He tasted blood as he bit his tongue. "We just got here, I swear!"

After an unintelligible grunt and another shove again
st Dom’s back, he sprinted away into the crowd. Dom hauled himself into the car and locked the doors. Blood rushed to his head. He felt dizzy. He wanted to yell at Brian for not doing anything, for not even making a move to save him, for sitting there and staring like an idiot.

But n
ow wasn't the time.

"We need to get out of here," he said. "Brian, are you listening? We need to go home."

The car on fire in the parking lot exploded. Bodies flew backward. Small bits of debris bounced off Brian’s car. A stillness followed it, onlookers gawking, but only for a moment before the chaos resumed.

Brian regained his composure. He reversed the car and turned them around. As they drove, the city returned to normal. The incident appeared t
o be isolated to that one area.

"That was fucking insane." Dom's voice was hoarse. It was all he could think to say, but he needed to say something. Anything to fill the empty silence.

"Yeah," Brian finally said. "Yeah, it really was. Like a movie or something."

There he was. That was Brian, Dom thought, finding a way to make it not so scary. On any other day he would hate it, but in tha
t moment it was what he needed. Dom laughed, uneasy but ready to lighten the mood.

"A Danny Boyle movie, right?"

Brian chuckled. "Yeah. Really though, we need to try and get some supplies before
that
is happening everywhere. Stock up, remember?"

"There's a Fred Meyer a few miles away from the movie theater. Let's try there before we start the drive back to Seattle."

As they drove, Dom compiled a list on his phone. It was somber at first; water, canned foods, dried foods, medical supplies. Then they started joking. Cherry and blackberry fruit pies, all the red vines the store has, condoms just in case. It went on until they were laughing hysterically. Brian almost ran a stop sign and the festivity ended.

Even once they parked and exited the car it felt normal. It was in stark contrast to the Wal-Mart. There wasn't a hint of anything amiss until they were inside the store. No regular sized shopping carts; Dom and Brian each took a half-sized, glad they didn’t have to resort to hand baskets. There were few cashiers, a fraction of the lanes open, but people were still being orderly.

Impatient, but orderly.

It was easy to start blocking out what they’d seen at Wal
-Mart. It was a fluke. Maybe it didn’t have anything to do with the infection? Dom thought of the stereotype of people that went to Wal-Mart. Blame it on that? God, what about Black Friday? It wasn’t totally out of the realm of possibility people would act like that.

They decided to
hit the canned food aisles first. Most of the quick foods were gone, like chili and soup. Canned vegetables and broths were much more plentiful.

"Who's gonna cook this stuff? I guess we'll need to print some recipes off the internet before we don't
have
the internet," Dom joked.

"You can be the wife." Brian reorganized his basket to fit more corn and beets. "You handle all that domestic stuff and I'll take care of…ah, repairs and defense and whatnot."

"Defense? You
never
go to the range with me and can barely dismantle a Glock to clean. I'd rather be the one doing the shooting."

Just as Dom said it a woman with a child in her cart passed by
, one of its wheels squeaking. Her eye was bruised and her daughter was crying silently. She stared at them before hurrying by. The levity they'd worked so hard for crashed and burned. Brian’s smile faded and Dom turned his eyes to the floor.

But for every person who seemed off in the store, there were those who didn't seem to give a damn the city had riots breaking out. They blocked the aisles with their carts
, chatting. A group of teenagers roamed the energy drink section, jostling each other and being obnoxious.

It was weird
. Were they denying what was going on? Did they know? Or maybe they didn't care? He’d been in the same boat not a few days before, thinking it would all blow over.

Wait until they see it for themselves
, Dom thought.
Then things will be different.

As they piled Band-Aids and rubbing alcohol into the tops of their carts, Dom's phone rang. It was Chelsea. After what happened she slipped his mind. He hated himself for that.

Chelsea and Dom met years before at a mutual friend’s party and were a match made in heaven. They both were movie buffs, frequenting the theater once or twice a week, and had an obsession with stouts and lagers. Deeper than that, despite their occasional fights and disagreements, they were always there for one another without being overbearing. Marriage was a possibility, one they had discussed, but Chelsea didn’t want to until after she finished college.

"Hey, what's up?” Dom asked.

"Oh, end of the world. The usual."

Dom laughed. Brian made a face and a humping gesture, which sent Dom walking down the aisle away from him.

"Where are you?" she asked.

"The Fred Meyer in Mercer Island. You need anything?"

"I thought you were going to Wal-Mart?"

He swallowed the knot in his throat. "We did. It was kind of rough there."

"What does that mean?" Her voice lowered. "Did you get hurt? Is everything okay?"

"It’s fine," he assured her. He passed the candy aisle. The same group of kids were shoving candy in their pockets and backpacks. A weary store clerk nearby saw them, but turned and walked away. "We're getting stuff here, then we'll come to get you. Sound good?"

"Yeah. Hey, Dom?"

"Hm?"

"Get some red vines, okay?"

He laughed. "One step ahead of you."

Dan Rector wasn't sure why he had bad luck. He'd read a book about a guy who could poach luck, stealing it away from people to sell to the highest bidder. The idea was appealing because then it meant his bad luck wasn't a cosmic joke. It was more of a sad affliction.

But it didn't matter what he told himself because, for whatever reason, he had the worst luck and it was going to get him killed. Not in a metaphoric kind of way.

It was literally going to get him killed in a matter of moments.

He'd done what the news said, staying inside his house, far from the hazards of
whatever sickness was going around. He locked the doors and windows, closed the curtains, and stayed in the middle of the house where people wouldn't see him from the outside. To keep himself occupied he went over the lines he had in Macbeth, telling himself that when everything blew over he'd be the only one who'd be ready for the play.

He savored the imaginary conversation in his head.

Dan, that was fabulous!

An absolute miracle. At least we have one true actor amongst us.

As he watched the news he even began to feel safe. The closest incident of infection was two cities away. He’d done a good job locking down the house. There wasn’t much reason
to be
afraid. The media was probably blowing things out of proportion anyway. Sure, there was an inkling of fear. A nagging ‘what if’ in the back of his head. But he was sure everyone felt that way.

Then someone broke the backdoor window. Dan heard it, reacting slowly and going for the garage rather than t
he front door—a deadly mistake. Had he gone for the front door he might’ve been able to make a run for it. Yet all he thought was
get to the car
.

The woman who broke in was obviously one of the infected people. Her eyes were bloody and she stunk
like sour milk and dumpsters. There was something in the way she whispered nonsense to herself, her limbs jerking of their own accord, which gave Dan a primal sense of fear he had known well as a child when his parents turned his bedroom light off.

He wanted to place her somewhere; maybe if he knew her it would explain why she picked
his
house out of
all
the houses. But deep down, Dan knew he’d never seen her before. It was luck. Bad, bad luck.

At gunpoint, she made Dan take his clothes off and tied him to the dining room table. The view of his kitchen ceiling wasn’t familiar to him. He tried focusing on the dusty chandelier, taking ragged breaths in between begging her to leave.

Once he was tied up she stood back, setting the gun on the counter. "I'm a chef," she said. She laughed maniacally. Saliva dribbled down her chin. "I'm best known for my butcher…butcherrrring."

The words stumbled from her lips. She gnawed on her tongue
until a sliver of blood mixed with the saliva on her chin, and spun around. She began jerking open drawers, silverware clattering loudly.

Dan’s bad luck had made him particularly resilient in bad situations, but this was beyond such things
. He felt the first sob building in his throat; when he saw the fillet knife she pulled from his knife block, the sob released in one long wail. His begging escalated.

"Please, don't. You don't have to do this."

The crazy woman leaned over him, prodding his thigh, then his bicep. His hip. Wherever her mind was, it was miles away. She brought the tip of the knife to his bicep and ran it in one clean, smooth stroke. Blood gushed and searing pain coursed through his body. He wasn't sure what was louder; his screams or her laughs.

Another stroke of the knife, another. He felt weight lift from his arm and saw that it was because she'd removed the meat of his bicep. She hefted it in her hands and set it on the counter.

"Tasty. Tassssty. I'm a good butcher. With a buerre blanc this will be delighttfullll!"

Dan wasn't lucky. If he was, he would've fallen unconscious early on. Instead, he stayed awake as she sliced away at his other bicep and his forearms, flaying him alive.

Chelsea's apartment was in a forested area off the main highway. The ride was quick and peaceful. They'd gotten at least a hundred cans of food, a variety of medical supplies, and all the sweets they'd been lusting for. The cashier commented on how they’d made a smart move coming in when they did, because shipments were being canceled right and left.

“We have to get new deliveries every day to keep items in stock,” he said. “You’d be surprised how fast we run out of stuff if even one shipment is canceled. It’s going to be like Christmas, but ten times worse.”

Despite Brian's ruthless teasing, Dom picked up a few boxes of condoms. If Chelsea was coming to stay for an indeterminate amount of time, they were bound to do something physical
eventually
. Having a baby during a zombie apocalypse wasn't the best survival move. He was being smart.

‘Zombie.’ Dom still wasn't sure if that was a word he should be
using. He hadn't seen a zombie, hadn't seen someone that was definitely a zombie on TV. The real threat were the people murdering each other a thousand miles away in seemingly non-zombie related ways.

But when he reminded himself people were harming each other a few miles away at the mere prospect of the end of days, where no signs of the infection had even been reported, it made it all worse.

The news kept calling it ‘infection’ or ‘the infectious disease.’ The official world used those words, but everyone else was calling it ‘zombies’ or the ‘zombie apocalypse’. It was no wonder it was in his head.

“Hey, we’re here. You go get her, I’ll stay in the car.” Brian whipped out his phone. Dom caught a glimpse of the red and white CNN interface before hopping out.